


And She's My Queen (Bitch)

by ashamedbliss



Series: Once and Future Queen [4]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Always-a-girl!Merlin, Animal Death, Arguing, F/M, Gender or Sex Swap, Genderbending, Girl!Merlin, Hunters & Hunting, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Possessive Arthur
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-22
Updated: 2015-05-22
Packaged: 2018-03-31 18:23:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3988135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashamedbliss/pseuds/ashamedbliss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gwaine calls Merlin a lady, and Merlin finds that she enjoys the compliment, much to Arthur's disdain</p>
            </blockquote>





	And She's My Queen (Bitch)

**Author's Note:**

> Look, I'll be blunt - there's no smut in this chapter. I'M SORRY. No but seriously this chapter is great for plot advancement and the next chapter should be pretty heavy with smut and we'll be back to our BDSM origins, thank god. Title from the song Shoot the Runner by Kasabian, the lyrics are pretty relevant to their relationship I think!
> 
> Warning - animal death, not detailed, mentioned very briefly

Merlin fidgets in the saddle, her horse whinnying softly at the movements. The summer air is thick around them, the quiets in conversation filled with the buzzing of insects, dancing in the shafts of light that fall into the flowering meadow, not far from Camelot. Merlin distracts herself from how uncomfortable it is riding in a dress (as a child she’d always borrowed a pair of Will’s breeches for the task) and attempts to identify the flowers that surrounded them in the clearing, in order to add more to those she has already collected.

“A beautiful bunch of flowers, my lady.”

Merlin startles, turning her horse towards the source of the voice: a knight with long hair and a broad smile, standing on the ground below her. She looks down at the flowers crushed in her hand, then opens her mouth to argue. “Sir, I’m no--”

“But I would say you are the most beautiful flower in this entire meadow.”

Merlin dips her chin and blushes so hard she can feel her neck heating up. She tugs at the sleeve of her pale blue dress, a ragged thing with at least two holes that needed darning. “You are too kind, good sir,” she murmurs. The knight wears Camelot’s colours, yet she does not know all of King Arthur’s knights by name: Arthur does not require his maidservant whilst on the training field or on missions, as he requires a stronger man who can carry his armour.

Since Arthur had found out about Merlin’s magic, however, and that she was perfectly capable of defending herself, he has been more lenient. This is Merlin’s first ever hunting trip, and her first time outside of the castle walls since she last visited her mother in Ealdor.

Their attention is drawn to a joyful shout and a smatter of applause on the other side of the clearing. Arthur cheers with his crossbow in the air, having just loosed a bolt at what Merlin presumes to be some poor deer. “I don’t like hunting,” she says to the knight below her, absentmindedly threading her flowers into the mane of her horse. “Why should a poor creature die for the pleasure of man?”

The knight folds his arms, his armour clanking slightly. Arthur was the only one not in full armour, being surrounded by his knights, and the only one not sweating in the ridiculous heat. “I think, personally, if a man is to kill a beast he should do it with his own hand, not a crossbow.”

“Howso? Deers are spooked easily by man,” Merlin asks, her eyebrow quirked. She pulls at her hair, gathering it over the other shoulder, the skin under where it was having grown warm.

“Have you ever shot a bow, my lady? Come, let me show you.”

The knight steadies Merlin’s horse, off which she clambers in a very unladylike fashion, not being used to riding in skirts. “Thank you, kind sir,” she says when she is at ground level, to find he isn’t quite as tall as Arthur.

“Gwaine,” he says with a broad smile, taking Merlin’s hand and gently kissing the back of it. Merlin covers her mouth with her other hand as she giggles. “At your service.”

On the other side of the clearing, Arthur’s knights return from the thick of trees, dragging a deer carcass. Arthur, for one of his peculiar reasons or another, had been ignoring Merlin for most of the past week, and she was tired of the lack of attention she was receiving, despite putting so much effort into making Arthur’s life as the King as easy as possible.

She smiles at Gwaine, and Gwaine smiles back tenfold. He seemed like a nice man, and Arthur has only spoken of praise about him. The name _does_ ring a bell, but Merlin can’t quite recall why.

“So, the bow?” Merlin asks, and Gwaine leads her to the chest of equipment, his hand in the small of Merlin’s back. It was the first such contact in weeks, Arthur having seemingly forgotten what she had told him of their shared destiny.

She was so tired of being treated as inferior, when she knew she deserved more.

“Have you ever fired a bow, my lady?” Gwaine asks, excitement colouring his tone.

“Never,” Merlin lies. She used to use it all the time with Will when they were younger, to hunt animals for dinner. She supposed that young ladies were not meant to kill things, though, and chooses to lie instead.

“Here, you hold it like this in this hand...” Gwaine begins explaining, but his words begin to fade away into nothingness as he stands up close behind her, his large hand closed over her own on the bow. He reaches around for her other hand, his whole body pressed up against her back. “...then you pull it back to your cheek, like this...”

Gwaine’s knuckles graze Merlin’s cheek, and she smiles, the kind of smile where one corner of her mouth curls up and Arthur always worries that Merlin is coming up with some kind of plan. “Can I try with an arrow?” she asks quietly, a murmur that is whispered into Gwaine’s ear. Gwaine disappears to return momentarily, his heat against her back too much for the humid summer afternoon. He helps her nock the arrow, and then lines her up again.

“Try for that tree over there, with the low branch,” Gwaine suggests into Merlin’s ear, but she bites her lip, having sighted her target. On the other side of the clearing, Arthur is boasting about how his bolt hit the deer right through its throat, showing off to his knights even though Merlin knows that once, when Arthur was a boy, he accidentally killed one of the castle mice and sulked for three days.

“Okay,” Merlin breathes, pulling the bow taught, Gwaine’s warmth all the way along her back. She watches Arthur pull his crossbow to the aim, about to put another bolt into the still twitching deer. At the last minute, Merlin changes her aim and looses the arrow.

It skims past Arthur’s flank and hits the deer in the head, putting it out of its misery. Arthur’s guards draw their swords and turn towards Merlin and Gwaine, the knight’s arms still wrapped around the maidservant. “Oops,” Merlin says loudly and pointedly, slowly lowering her bow.

“Gwaine,” Arthur says coolly. “Step away from Merlin.”

Gwaine drops his arms as if Merlin were made from fire. “You’re _Merlin_? I’m so sorry, my lady, I didn’t realise - Arthur’s been going on about you for weeks--”

“Merlin is not a lady, Gwaine, and if you want to keep your knighthood I suggest you stop referring to her as such. You’re on skinning duty. Leon, escort Merlin back to Camelot.”

Merlin had been smirking at Arthur’s apparent inability to stop talking about her to his knights, until that final command. Normally she would shout, or make a sarcastic remark, but here she is surrounded by Arthur’s knights, and Arthur has a look in his eye that Merlin cannot quite decipher. Instead, she turns to Gwaine. “Thank you, kind sir, for your bow lessons. They were quite useful,” she says, tipping her head slightly before offering Gwaine’s help to remount her horse, still with the bow in her hand. When no one is looking, she quickly summons one of the arrows from the quiver and snatches it out of the air as it zips towards her.

Leon begins leading the way from the clearing to the road at a fair pace, and Merlin’s horse is at a gallop when she turns around and looses her final arrow. This time, it barely skims past Arthur’s head, and the last he sees of Merlin is her galloping away, with her chin high in the air.

Once nearer to Camelot, Leon slows his horse down to a canter, and Merlin does the same. “Where did you learn to shoot a bow like that?” Leon asks.

“When I was younger,” Merlin replies quietly, smiling to herself a little as she remembers. “Me and my friend Will, we made our own bows after one of the elders in the village taught us how, and the first time we got a rabbit, we were so excited,” she explains, turning to Leon with a grin on her face. “I was always better than Will, mind you, but that was... that was before the fire.”

Leon doesn’t pry further, and Merlin thinks that is quite chivalrous of him. Instead, he asks Merlin of how she arrived in Camelot, and what she thinks of the kingdom.

Merlin eventually smirks, batting her eyelashes coquettishly. “Sir Leon, has the King asked you to find out more information about me?”

Leon’s cheeks fill with colour slightly. “No, of course he didn’t. Surely he would find out for himself.”

Merlin rolls her eyes and gives her horse a squeeze, trotting ahead of Leon as the walls of Camelot appear in the distance.

*

Merlin is sat on Arthur’s bed that night, embroidering one of his cloaks by hand when there is a knock on the door. “Hello?” she calls out.

The last thing she expects is to see two guards at the door.

“You are to be escorted to the Throne Room,” one of them says, the other grimacing at her.

Merlin stands up warily. “Why?” She hadn’t used magic in the clearing, and would be slightly offended if Arthur had assumed as such. She was good enough with a bow on her own.

The guards stride into the room and grab her by the elbows, giving her no answer. They lead her down the dark corridors of the castle, having quietened after the bustle of the day that Merlin had spent in the countryside. Merlin tries not to struggle, but she trips over her mud-stained dress nearly three times, the guards relentless in their pace.

When they arrive at the Throne Room, Arthur sits on his throne, nearly slumped in it, illuminated by only a couple of candles. He does not stand when the guards enter. “Leave her there,” he commands, voice echoing through the empty room. “And then go,” he says, with a dismissive flick of his wrist.

Merlin is dumped to the floor in a tangle of limbs, and doesn’t look up until after the doors shut behind her.

“Get up.”

Arthur’s tone holds no room for fooling about. She stands up, brushing her dress down before walking when bidden towards the throne. Her footsteps echo, and her heartbeat is even louder. When she reaches Arthur’s feet she kneels again, a sick feeling in her stomach.

“You tried to kill me today, Merlin,” Arthur says. His voice is flat, and when she peeks up at him, his hands are in fists on the throne’s armrests.

Merlin finds herself talking before she even thinks. “Sire, I swear, I--”

“And even worse than that, was that you let Gwaine touch you like you’re some common whore.”

Merlin bristles. So _this_ is the reason why she’s on her knees fearing for her life: Arthur’s jealousy. Her magic prickles under her skin and she looks straight up at Arthur, sure that her eyes are glowing gold.

“I am _not_ a whore,” she says, and her voice is amplified in the large room. “You have no right to say those things about me, or to lay claim to me. If you’re too _ashamed_ of me to claim me as your own, then let me get on with my life.”

“No,” Arthur says slowly, drawing it out as if it’s a game.

Merlin stands suddenly, fists bunched at her sides. She can hear her magic crackling in the air, but to his credit Arthur does not flinch. “Fuck _you_ ,” she says, throwing her body weight forward as she does it, like a lion uses its mane. “I am not a toy to be used. I am the most powerful sorceress in Albion and you do _not_ want to scorn me.”

Merlin turns on her heel and storms back through the room, gritting her teeth together to keep her resolve.

“Merlin, stop,” she hears from far behind her, but she is almost at the doors. She goes to pull on one of the handles, but it doesn’t budge. A beam must’ve been placed on the other side of the door, but she cannot remove it without revealing her identity.

She turns around to find Arthur striding down the room, still fit despite his near thirty years. Merlin realises slowly that she is the deer and he is the arrow, and that it’s all changed, now. Her twenty years feel like nothing; she still feels like a child.

“Let me go,” she says quietly, voice hoarse, submitting as she always has and as she always will. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

Arthur must see the tears rolling down Merlin’s cheek, the result of a thousand different emotions in the space of three minutes, but he does not say anything. “You may be the most powerful sorceress in Albion, Merlin, but I bet Gwaine didn’t treat you like that today, did he?”

Merlin sniffs. “He called me a lady. That’s more than you ever call me, if you ever _deign_ to speak to me.”

Arthur sighs, and suddenly the darkness is oppressive. Merlin mumbles a few words and the lanterns in the throne room come to life, dancing with flames. Arthur looks around, astounded. “You can perform such feats, but you would lower yourself to Gwaine’s level?”

“Gwaine treated me with more courtesy in ten minutes than you have done in months,” Merlin says, able to see the hurt now on Arthur’s face. She closes her eyes for a moment. “I like you, Arthur,” she continues, softly. “I think about you so much that I wonder if I’ve been cursed myself. But you give me nothing in return, at least not in public, and that just isn’t fair.”

“What would you have me do?” Arthur asks, and Merlin pretends she didn’t hear the desperation hidden in his tone.

“Well, if you like me as much as Gwaine and Leon both say you do, you would start being nicer to me. Announce your intentions, or at least that we’re courting. Give me something to go on.” Merlin swallows, and then reaches for one of Arthur’s hands, barely able to hold it in both of hers. “I know I’m young, and that there have been women before me, but you know who I am, what we’re meant to be.” Her voice is just above a whisper now. “We can’t unite all of Albion if I am just a servant girl, and if my King ignores me in court.”

Arthur nods. He takes one of Merlin’s hands and kisses the knuckles of it, as Gwaine had done hours, maybe even lifetimes ago now. “As you wish, my lady.”

Merlin can’t help but smile.

*

A few days later, Merlin is sat embroidering the same cloak, because embroidery is one of the few things that stubbornly refuses to be done by magic. This time, the door opens without a knock and Arthur enters. “Hello.”

“Hi,” Merlin breathes in response, and as Arthur sits down next to her on his bed, she sets the cloak and needle aside.

“You shouldn’t sit on my bed as you do my chores, _Mer_ lin,” Arthur admonishes lightly, but he’s smiling in that way that infuriates Merlin.

“Well, _sire_ , maybe you should repair your own cloak if that’s the case,” she replies, before giving him a quick smile and gesturing. “The light is best here. I can actually see what I’m doing.”

“I have a present for you,” Arthur says, and Merlin’s face lights up. She hadn’t expected him to be so nice, so soon. “Well, I hope you will see it as a present.”

Out of his pocket, Arthur pulls what looks like a red ribbon. When Merlin looks more closely, she can see that each end has a golden clasp, and in the middle there is a tiny pendant adorned with the Pendragon crest.

“Lift your hair up,” Arthur says, and Merlin pulls her thick hair up so Arthur can get to her neck. After a few moments of fumbling, his fingers hot against her skin, he manages to get the necklace on. It’s a touch too tight, but Merlin likes it, likes the feel of Pendragon around her neck. “This is so everyone can see who you belong to... who you are claimed by.”

Arthur touches Merlin’s chin, forcing her to turn her head back towards him again. Her fingers touch the pendant delicately. “You look awfully good in red,” Arthur says, looking from the red necklace to the red woolen dress Merlin wears. “When you are Queen, you will have so many dresses, in silks and satins... red, but also blue, for your eyes. And I’ll have another necklace made, more suitable for your station. But for now, this one will do. I’ll have dresses made for you now, more red ones, I think,” he says, pausing to look her up and down. “And I’ll move you out of your chambers into lodgings more suitable. Will that do, _my lady?_ ” he smirks, and Merlin rolls her eyes at the title.

She opens her mouth to speak, enjoying the feeling of the necklace against her skin. “Well, I suppose it’s a start,” Merlin says as she smiles, and then Arthur thumbs at the necklace before pulling her close for a kiss.

She really does hope it’s the start of _something_.


End file.
